Archive for the ‘bouncing ball’ Category

We continue to digitize and master the Fleischer Bouncing Ball Screen Songs for inclusion in our database. These cartoons haven’t been seen since they were syndicated for television in the 1950s. Today’s cartoon is a real gem… "Mariutch" (1930).

Up to now, the history of animation has been told by studio, or by character. But the true history of animation is the story of the people who created these cartoons. "Mariutch" is important because it vividly illustrates the impact that one man had on the Fleischer Studios.

"I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles" looks very much like the Screen Songs and Out of the Inkwell cartoons that preceded it… stark white backgrounds with heavy black lines around the characters. This was the look of the "slash system", a technique using overlapping paper cutouts which predated painting the characters on celluloid. The sound synchronization in this cartoon is pretty clumsy, and charming as it is, some of the drawing and animation is primitive as well.

This style of animation was par for the course at the Fleischers in 1929. But when Grim Natwick joined the studio in early 1930, the look of the Fleischer films changed completely. A full range of gray tones was added to both characters and backgrounds. The animation became much more fluid and well-drawn, thanks in great part to Grim’s expert draftsmanship. Along with his crew of kids… Jimmie Culhane, Willard Bowsky and Rudy Zamora, Grim Natwick proceeded to animate things that had never been seen before on the cartoon screen.

"Mariutch" appears to have been animated almost singlehandedly by Grim. It includes many examples of his experimental movement and timing, which you can see in abundance in another cartoon we posted a few months back, "Swing, You Sinners". Most of all, this cartoon is notable for the early examples of "Grim girls".

Throughout his career, Grim Natwick excelled at animating girls. He created Betty Boop for the Fleischers, refined and expanded upon his girls at Iwerks, and ended up at Disney animating the ultimate Disney heroine, Snow White. In later years, he would recharge himself between scenes by drawing all types of girls, lettering in a suitable name for them alongside the sketch. Here are a couple of animation drawings by Grim from "Mariutch"…

The narration and singing in this cartoon features the first recording star, Billy Murray. He was famous for his dialect songs and made hundreds of records of songs like this for Victor, Edison and Columbia. I hope you enjoy "Mariutch". We’ll have another Screen Song for you soon.

This Saturday, the archive video guru, Eric Graf sat down to begin digitizing an amazing collection of Fleischer Bouncing Ball cartoons. These were among the most popular cartoons of their day; however, taken out of their original theatrical context, it isn’t quite the same experience viewing them today.

Each cartoon consisted of an animated introduction, followed by an invitation by the narrator to "Follow the bouncing ball…" A singalong section designed to get the whole audience singing was followed by an animated singalong where the characters interacted with the words of the song. If you’ve ever seen any of these films projected on the big screen, you know what fun it is to be singing along, and suddenly have the cartoon characters start cavorting with the words you’re singing.

This film is interesting, because it includes some early attempts at lipsync. The rabbit conductor speaks to the audience in stilted speech, obviously designed to be understood over the primitive theater sound systems of the time. But the stilted speech and the bizzarre drawings create a truly weird and wonderful effect. Drawings this strange don’t happen by accident! Still frame through this scene and check them out. John K theorizes that this scene might be some sort of animation equivalent of exquisite corpse. Marc Deckter has provided lots of great frame grabs of the crazy lipsync at his blog, Duck Walk.

An interesting side note is that the narrator who refers to the rabbit as “funny boy” is none other than pioneer recording artist, Billy Murray, disguising his natural tenor as a baritone. He narrates many of the Fleischer cartoons of this era, and provided the original voice for Bimbo.

We are fortunate to have over ten hours of Fleischer Screen Songs on Beta tapes. With your support, we have assembled a video digitization station where we can capture video. There’s literally hundreds of hours of cartoons waiting to be digitized… the entire Terrytoons syndication package donated by John Kricfalusi. The Warner Bros and MGM laserdisc box sets, the complete run of Format Films’ Alvin Show, and classic television commercials from the 1950s and 60s. As time and funding allow, we will be adding this material to our database.

I would like to thank the membership of The International Animated Film Society: ASIFA-Hollywood for sponsoring my efforts to get this project off the ground during its first few years. In particular, I owe a debt of gratitude to ASIFA-Hollywood's president, Antran Manoogian. Without his unwavering support and valuable guidance this project would not exist. -Stephen Worth